Substance Abuse

(Newser) - Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a safe-injection program for heroin addicts today, BBC reports. The referendum, backed by 68% of voters, makes permanent a 14-year-old Swiss program that allows doctors to shoot up heroin users while attending to their medical and mental health needs. Switzerland will be the first nation to make such a program official policy. More »

(Newser) - A newly discovered gene can improve your chances of getting hooked on cocaine, scientists said today. A study of 670 cocaine addicts and 700 non-users found that addicts were 25% more likely to have the gene variant. The discovery could lead to DNA screenings for those likely to try the drug, scientists say. "You can certainly use this as a vulnerability marker for cocaine addiction," an author of the study told the Guardian . More »

(Newser) - Helen Mirren stopped using cocaine because of a Nazi war criminal. “I loved coke," says the Academy Award-winning actress. "I never did a lot, just a little bit at parties.” And she gave it up after learning that Klaus Barbie was living off cocaine proceeds while hiding out in South America in the 1980s, the Guardian reports. More »

(Newser) - Argentina's president is seeking to legalize drug use and a crack down on dealing and trafficking, CNN reports. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's plan follows similar moves by European and Latin American nations, where decriminalization has not increased drug use, one expert said. Mexico proposed such a law several years ago, but backed down when Washington reacted harshly. More »

(Newser) - The junkie's tale of redemption is nearly a cliché by now, and David Carr acknowledges as much as he writes his own. But Carr, now a reporter for the New York Times , takes pains not to sugar-coat the years he spent as a "fat thug who beat up women and sold bad coke." His salvation turned out to be his coke-addicted girlfriend and the twin girls they had—the same twins he once left alone as infants in a frigid car as he visited a dope house .   More »

(Newser) - Marijuana is getting stronger, but what exactly that means is open to interpretation. The Boston Globe looks at a dispute with clearly drawn sides but fuzzier facts. Is pot addictive and highly hazardous, or no more harmful than caffeine and perhaps medically beneficial? With minimal research to draw on, experts say, opponents and proponents of weed are cherry-picking their data. More »

(Newser) - Today's marijuana is the strongest crop since the heyday of Cheech and Chong, a new study finds. University researchers who analyzed seized samples dating back to the '70s found the level of active ingredient THC hit an average of 9.6% last year, up almost 1% from the year before and more than double the 4% recorded for 1983, the AP reports. More »

(Newser) - Heavy marijuana use over a number of years can cause significant brain abnormalities, damage memory and emotional processing, and even shrink parts of the brain, the Age reports. All cannabis smokers—not just high-risk groups such as the young and those susceptible to mental illness—can experience effects equivalent to those of a mild brain injury, Australian researchers found. More »

(Newser) - Troubled actress Tatum O'Neal, who wrote a book on her addiction to drugs and alcohol, was arrested last night for buying crack cocaine down the block from her Manhattan luxury condo, the New York Post reports. O'Neal, who at 10 was the youngest person to win an Oscar, for Paper Moon , was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance. More »

(Newser) - Josh Hamilton can appreciate the high he's riding now, because his personal lows have been pretty rough. The first pick of baseball's 1999 draft was booted in 2004 for failing drug tests after picking up a cocaine habit. But now the Rangers outfielder has traded a bottle of Crown Royal a day for a swing at the triple crown, Sports Illustrated reports. More »

(Newser) - One of the first acts of the newly elected mayor of London was to ban drinking alcohol on London's Tube subway system and buses , USA Today reports. The ban, which was a campaign pledge by Boris Johnson, will take effect Sunday. Public drinking has been commonplace in Britain for decades. More »

(Newser) - Production of cannabis-centric films is hitting a high, reports the Christian Science Monitor . Once pigeonholed with Cheech and Chong and low-budget cult films such as The Big Lebowski , movies that feature pot-smoking characters now tend toward mainstream frat-house humor. This summer alone will see four marijuana-tinged releases, including the Judd Apatow-produced Pineapple Express . More »

(Newser) - Major corporations are trying to see dollar signs through the haze of pot smoke hovering over this year's 4/20 stonerpalooza, as the pseudo-holiday gains national attention with its large, (idly) devoted following on college campuses. This year, festivities will include stoner cinema debuts like "Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo" and "Super High Me," MSNBC reports. More »

(Newser) - Vermonters smoke the most pot and Utah has the lowest drinking and marijuana rates among young people in the nation—but the highest rates of adults reporting mental health problems. Those are some of the nuggets uncovered in a fascinating new report by government researchers who made a state-by-state examination of substance abuse and mental health problems, Reuters reports. More »

(Newser) - Drunkorexia isn't an official medical term, reports the New York Times, but the disorder is on a growing list of afflictions that combine societal acceptance of substance abuse and pressure to be thin. Drunkorexics, who are typically college-age women, shun food to prevent weight gain and to offset the calories they consume in alcohol. More »

(Newser) - Christian Brando, the eldest of the late Godfather's nine children, died today from pneumonia at 49. Brando, the product of his iconic father's first marriage, earned the media limelight in 1990 for shooting to death his sister's boyfriend, he LA Times reports. But he was in and out of the court system for much of his troubled life. More »

(Newser) - The media loves to publish experts' diagnoses of Britney Spears, but assessing a patient's mental condition from gossip columns is irresponsible—and it's giving therapists a bad rep, concluded some professionals at an American Psychoanalytic Association summit. "Brains don't have a checkbox," one analyst told the AP, but some media outlets say such opinions are essential to coverage. More »

(Newser) - Records of post-traumatic stress disorder go as far back as The Odyssey, and Iraq veterans are adding to the list. Combat trauma has been repeatedly linked with rates of unemployment, substance abuse, domestic violence and criminality above the national average. Yet  PTSD victims aren't getting the treatment they need, and often end up behind bars, the New York Times reports. More »